From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Will Wright, the video-game designer responsible for some of the best-selling titles of all time, says that video games are better at inspiring students to learn than actually teaching them.

This past week, I have been in Knoxville, TN, for Destination ImagiNation’s Global Finals. Perhaps one of the best kept secrets in education, “DI is an innovative organization that teaches creativity, teamwork and problem solving to students across the U.S. and in more than 30 countries. Its main program is an unconventional team learning experience [...]

Wow-oh-wow, oh wow!!!! From TED earlier this month: MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables — cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning? More elsewhere: Siftables at MIT D. Merrill, [...]

One of the big ideas from 6.0 was that kids are not naturally good at complex games. They often have the time, resources, but they do not always have the guidance of a mentor. Many kids are playing games designed by adults for adults. This is good and bad. Good in that the adult games [...]

Squeak is based on the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language developed by Xerox in the 1980s. Today, it is used as a “media authoring tool” to create virtual, educational toys in the classroom. Using a constructivist framework, “some students work with media created in Squeak by their teachers; others are creating their own simulations and models [...]